Life After Cars: An Evening with the Authors

Name: Life After Cars: An Evening with the Authors
Start: 2026-01-21T19:00:00-05:00
Location: White Eagle Hall

Schedule

Wed, 21 Jan, 2026 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

White Eagle Hall | Jersey City, NJ

Bike JC is thrilled to partner with Jersey City Theater Center and Little City Books to host an evening with Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, the co-hosts of The War on Cars podcast and authors of Life After Cars, at White Eagle Hall on Wednesday, January 21. This is an extremely exciting event about the future we are creating together: one with fewer cars, safer streets, and no more deaths from traffic violence.
LIFE AFTER CARS: An Evening with Authors
Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026 at 7:00PM
White Eagle Hall
General Tickets: $25.00
Grab your copy of the book as an add-on when purchasing tickets! PICK UP only.
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From the hosts of The War on Cars podcast comes a searing indictment of how cars ruin everything—and what we can do to fight back.
When the very first cars rolled off production lines, they were hailed as technological marvels, promising convenience, progress, and freedom. But more than a century later, that dream is running on empty.
That’s why we need Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. Through historical records, revealing interviews, and unflinching statistics, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, hosts of The War on Cars podcast, and former host Aaron Naparstek unpack the scale of damage that cars cause, the forces that have created our current crisis and are invested in perpetuating it, and the way that the fight for better transportation is deeply linked to the fight for a more equitable and just society.
Name an issue affecting society today and there’s a good bet it is caused or at least exacerbated by society’s overreliance on cars. Instead of delivering unbounded freedom, the rise of car culture has come with devastating costs, such as:
the demolition of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to make way for car infrastructure
an epidemic of violent death on our roads
countless hours lost in traffic
isolation from our fellow human beings
a worsening housing affordability crisis, exacerbated by land-use regulations that prioritize sprawling, car-dependent suburban development
disproportionate impacts on traffic enforcement on Black and brown communities
the ongoing destruction of the natural world
Crucially, the book challenges one of America’s most cherished myths: that cars equal freedom. In much of the country, driving isn’t a choice—it’s a requirement, the product of underfunded transit systems and decades of car-centric planning. This so-called “freedom” is often coerced, costly, and isolating.
Instead, the book offers a more meaningful and collective vision of freedom—freedom from dependence on fossil fuels, hours lost in traffic, ballooning maintenance costs, and the daily threat of injury or death. It imagines a world where walking, biking, and transit are safe, accessible, and reliable—for everyone.
This urgent and hopeful work arms readers with the tools they need to implement real, transformative change, from simply raising awareness to taking a stand at public forums. It’s past time to radically rethink—and shrink—society’s collective relationship with the automobile.
This is a call to action for anyone willing to challenge the status quo. Together, let’s create a better Life After Cars.
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Sarah Goodyear is a journalist and author who has covered cities and transportation for publications such as Grist, CityLab, and Streetsblog.
Doug Gordon is a TV producer and writer who is also a neighborhood safe streets advocate better known online as Brooklyn Spoke.
Aaron Naparstek is the founding editor of Streetsblog, a news site that launched in 2006 and is dedicated to what was then called New York’s “livable streets” renaissance.
They live with their families in Brooklyn, and they came together to create The War on Cars podcast in 2018 out of a sense that no one was covering the subject of cars and what they do to culture, society, and the planet in the way they felt it deserved. Doug and Sarah continue to host the podcast.